With green lights and a hashtag challenge, Waterbury speech therapist ignites stuttering awareness
May 17, 2024 | By Danae Moyer | Community News Service
The green lights in the Waterbury roundabout are in observance of National Stuttering Awareness Week, May 12-18. Photo by Gordon Miller
After watching her patients struggle not only with speech difficulties but also with social mistreatment because of them, a Waterbury speech-language pathologist decided to take action.
Danra Kazenski, Ph.D., a clinical associate professor at the University of Vermont and founder of Vermont Stuttering Therapy in Waterbury, has made it her goal to end the stigma of stuttering. By practicing what she describes as an “acceptance-based model of therapy,” Kazenski works to help patients who stutter accept their speech patterns and live with them.
This month, Kazenski channeled that theme of acceptance during National Stuttering Awareness Week, May 12-18, by creating a display of green lights in the Waterbury rotary and putting up signs nearby.
“It’s sea green for stuttering,” Kazenski said during an interview over Zoom recently. In addition to the lights, Kazenski put a sign at the “Welcome to Waterbury” spot at the rotary and hung a banner near the municipal offices nearby on North Main Street.
Kazenski received permission from the town selectboard for the display. “I thought it was something the community would enjoy seeing represented,” said Select Board Chair Roger Clapp.
The Stuttering Awareness Week display followed another recent effort by Kazenski to shine a light on stuttering. In March, she launched a social media campaign that resonated around the world. Kazenski’s inspiration for the campaign came not only from her patients who have suffered from ridicule for their speech differences, but also from the national attention generated by President Joe Biden, who has spoken openly about his own stuttering and has endured insults about it just recently from political rivals.
According to the National Stuttering Association, about 79 million people worldwide stutter. An estimated 4% to 5% of the population stutters during childhood, and about 1% continue into adulthood. That equates to about 3 million adults in the United States, the association reports.
With no treatment to cure stuttering, advocates and therapists aim to heighten awareness and acceptance around the trait. Danra Kazenski’s speech pathology practice, Vermont Stuttering Therapy, is based in Waterbury. Photo by Gordon Miller
The cause of stuttering is largely unknown but stems from differences in brain activity that interfere with the production of speech. Therapy for stuttering, the national association says, has shifted from focusing on the goal of speaking clearly to minimizing stigma and encouraging acceptance and support.
A Waterbury resident for the past seven years, Kazenski runs her speech-therapy practice from an office on North Main Street. She also leads a support group for people who stutter with Barry Guitar, another University of Vermont therapist and expert in stuttering treatment and research.
Local musician Sergio Torres, 69, said he has stuttered since childhood and joined Kazenski’s support group.
“I had a really severe speech problem,” said Torres. “I have stuttered since I was about 4 or 5 years old, but I never really did anything until I was 32 years old.”
The support group, particularly the therapists, have helped, he said. “These people have done a miracle on me, I would say,” Torres said. “They really took me into their hands and they spent years on my speech.”
His success came not just from Kazenski’s clinical work, but from her approach to her patients. “Danra has just been awesome,” he said. “She is genuine, she’s supportive of us all — men, women, children.”
The #normalizestutteringchallenge
UVM Professor Danra Kazenski (right) and husband Phil Whitcher hold a banner announcing National Stuttering Awareness Week. Photo by Gordon Miller
Kazenski said she began focusing on public awareness of differing speech patterns after a patient who stuttered died by suicide at age 12 in September 2020. “Your soul goes through things when something like that happens,” she said of her young patient’s death. “I had been looking for a way to give back in a different way.”
That was when Kazenski said she decided to add an online Etsy store to her website, selling t-shirts, mugs, buttons and other products with stuttering-awareness slogans such as “Leave no stutterer behind” and “Normalize stuttering.” Proceeds support the National Stuttering Association’s work to help connect people who stutter with each other, according to the site.
Just recently, Kazenski decided to take the issue to social media.
She described how on March 9 she saw news coverage of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally mocking Biden and his stuttering. That same day, People magazine published an article about a new Vermont gun law that told the story of Kazenski’s young client who took his own life using an unsecured handgun. That coincidence prompted Kazenski to launch a weeklong social media blitz.
“I reached a breaking point and enough was enough,” she said. She joined other stuttering advocates to launch the #normalizestutteringchallenge on Instagram and Facebook. “We created a platform for the voices of people who stutter to be heard, and for allies to stand together in solidarity,” she said.
She asked social media followers to post short videos saying either, “I stutter, and I’m worth listening to,” or, for those who don’t stutter, “If you stutter, I’m listening,” using the hashtag.
Find the social media posts online with the hashtag #normalizestutteringchallenge. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
“I made a very lofty goal of trying to get a million people to do this in a week,” she said.
The challenge that began in Waterbury generated responses from South America, Africa, Australia and Ireland, Kazenski said. She didn’t reach the goal of 1 million participants, but hundreds of people posted videos.
“Young children did it. Their parents did it,” Kazenski said. “I cried every day. It was one of those things where it was amazing how people kind of took to it.”
To the therapist, the online challenge and the light display in her hometown honor the young patient she lost — and those who stutter everywhere.
On Monday, May 13, Kazenski and University of Vermont graduate student Izzy Moffroid were featured on the Across the Fence public affairs program on WCAX-TV. Moffroid, who stutters, is graduating with a masters in communication science and disorders and helps lead a monthly school-age National Stuttering Association support group.
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